


Treasure Hunt

by Flora (florahart)



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Clint takes care of family, Coulson knows everything, F/M, M/M, Space AU, Tony is manipulative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-06
Updated: 2013-01-06
Packaged: 2017-11-23 21:02:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/626483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/florahart/pseuds/Flora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint Barton is a medium-well-known treasure hunter.  Phil Coulson has a ship.  And Tony Stark, spacecruiser owner, wants an artifact from poorly-charted space</p>
            </blockquote>





	Treasure Hunt

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Clint/Coulson exchange on LJ (cc_exchange) for psyko-kittie. The request was for Space AU, which I accomplished, but then getting Clint and Coulson to do anything about their attraction in the context I gave them turned out more difficult than expected. Alas.

"So, I hear you're some kind of bigshot among thieves," Stark said. "How come you've never taken one of my invitations before?" His manner was lazy, one knee over the arm of the chair Clint couldn't help but compare to an old-school throne, fingers picking at nothing on the lush fabric covering that upraised knee, but his eyes were bright and interested. Even if his reputation as a bona fide fucking genius didn't precede him, it was obvious that this answer mattered.

The actual answer, problematically, was _because Steve's waking up blue more mornings than not at this point, and I need the cash for an implant for him right goddamn now and that's on the short list of reasons I'd take on the pain in the ass entailed in working for a sleazy bastard like you_.

Obviously he couldn't say that. And, okay, it wasn't entirely true; it was more the pain in the ass part than the sleazy part, since engaging with unsavory elements was sort of the deal in the treasure-hunting mercenary gig.

"I've never felt like I was ready," he said instead, looking around obviously at the opulence of the room. "Never felt like I was prepared to measure up." He tossed on a "Sir" at the end for good measure, although from the slight twitch in the corner of Stark's eye, it hadn't been all that convincing.

Damn it. Not that Stark had been begging for him or anything; it was just that offers had come his way a couple of times. He and the guys had always decided it just wasn't worth it.

"And how do I know it's not just that you think I'm a prick and you don't want to sully your extremely clean thieving mercenary hands by association?"

A slight movement in the corner caught Clint's eye, and he blinked to cover a moment of startlement. Fury was here with Romanova, probably to compete for the job, and goddamn if both of them didn't know exactly how Clint felt about Stark, his assets, and his playboy persona. And probably have the filmchip to prove it. Well, shit.

"Doesn't matter," he finally said, choosing honesty. "I take a job, I do it, and I've never backed out of one yet. If I restricted myself to dealing with non-dickheads, I'd have a hell of a time finding a job."

"That doesn't answer the question of why now."

"Let's just say I have time on my hands and something of a financial situation I need to resolve, which has never been the case for previous offers."

Stark stared at him for a minute, eyes narrowed, and Clint had the strange sensation the picking of his fingers had developed purpose. Manipulating an implant of his own, maybe? Mnemonic device? One-handed math? Clint stood his ground.

"Fine," Stark said at last. "Don't answer, but don't fuck this up. You might have heard I don't like failure."

"Yeah, I got that. If I fail, it'll be because _someone_ \--"Clint glanced to where Fury and Romanova had been, but they were already gone, fuck-- "got in my way and I couldn't get them out. Which has also never happened."

"See that it doesn't. That's not a threat; it's just that if you fuck up, I have to tell the bookkeepers, and they _talk_. And it really sucks to be a mercenary who fucks up." And with that, Stark's attention diverted as he ran the flat of his hand over a smooth surface on the arm of the chair, bringing up a hologram of his captain , who looked up. 

"Yes?"

He smiled at her like she was his favorite--convincingly, which was disconcerting; Stark wasn't known for being a sappy man--and cheerfully said, "Pep, bring Barton the specifications and a contract. I think we're coming to agreement." He dropped the display and looked back at Clint. "You do have your own ship, I assume?"

"Nope, don’t want to deal with the taxes. I subcontract. Don't worry, I got four guys I know and a line on a couple more."

"Reliable?"

"Always."

"Uh-huh. Well we can include that in the contract now--reduce the value, of course, if I'm paying for the pilot and the ship, and you still gotta get in, get out, do the hokey pokey on your dime--or if you run into trouble we can do it later, but it'll cost ya more."

"I'll be fine."

"You better be better than fine." A door opened-- _melted_ open, if Clint's eyes were to be believed--in the wall behind him, and the captain stepped through. 

"Mister Barton, I believe."

"I guess you're 'Pep'?"

"Virginia Potts, often Pepper, never excited about Pep."

"Miss Potts." Clint took the contract spinset from her hands. "One of my associates will need to have a look at this. They're in the lounge."

"I'll walk with you," she said. She looked back over her shoulder at Stark. "Tony, you made him leave his team in the lounge?"

"Might have been assassins."

Clint snorted. " _I'm_ the assassin in the crew, man. If my plan had involved killing you, I'd have sent one of them in wearing imgen, and I'd be up there." He pointed at the narrow beam that held a pair of chandeliers. "Not my game."

"Good to know how you'd try, but there's no image generation system in the _cosmos_ my sniffers can't finger. Or, you know, sniff." Stark shrugged and waved him away with the back of his hand. "Well, Pep will see to you."

Clint nodded at Stark, looked at Miss Potts, and gestured for her to lead the way.

\--

"Seriously, Clint? There's a penalty clause in here for eating lemon-filled donuts during the job," Darcy said.

"Strike through that," Miss Potts told her. "Tony's standard contract isn't exactly normal, but making changes is expected and if you left everything he'd know you weren't paying attention."

"Yeah, did," she said, holding up the section currently stretched between the split reels, "but the implication is a problem. I'm adding no watchers."

"Of course."

Clint scowled. "No listeners, either. Or--" he shuddered-- "fucking _feelers_ , which I definitely do not allow on any ship I'm contracting."

"He'll certainly follow every spincast he can hack into," Miss Potts said, "and if he can hire someone to shake your hand and send him an update, he will. He's a little hyper that way."

"A little?"

"His business runs on his genius and his network." She smiled. "But your associate should add all the restrictions in any case. I might even be able to get him to comply."

"Yeah, no," Darcy said. She looked at Clint. "My primary employment contract says no watchers. If she can't guarantee no bugs crawling down my fucking shirt while I sleep--"

"No watchers," Miss Potts agreed, "And no listeners."

Clint looked at her hard for a minute, then stuck out his hand to seal the deal. While he had her in his grip, he grinned and said, "Remind your boss. IPL 7724B says I have the right to autonomy, and I haven't ceded it. I can--and I will--defend that right. I shoot a mean arrow, and Darcy here isn't bad with electrospikes. Better give 'em combat pay if he's gonna try, because they'll probably come back in a cremabag."

She pursed her lips, but Clint was pretty sure it was a purse of exceeded expectations, not one of annoyance. "I'll remind him," she said. "And point out how much his bookkeeper dislikes illegal activity." She shook his hand then, pumped it up and down the old-fashioned way, and added, "I think you'll do."

And then she held out her hand for the spinset, rapidly scanned and approved the changes, and printed on the dotted circle before handing it to him for the same. He rolled his thumb over her print and they were done.

Once she'd gone, Darcy arched a brow. "Now you're citing interplanetary law?"

"7724B. "

"Yeah, I don't think I know that one. Is it real?"

"Pretty much. It doesn't actually say I can _shoot_ 'em, but I like to read between the lines. I'm choosing to think Miss Potts was a fan of that reading."

Darcy grinned. "Sweet. So, what're we doing for a ship?"

"Yeah, that… I'm workin' on that."

\--

"We should have taken the job for the Xavier folks," Steve said. "It woulda been safer, and I _know_ I coulda done the papers even now."

Clint shook his head and sat gingerly on the side of the cot they'd set up for Steve in the front room, clapping him on the shoulder. "Buddy, I know you coulda, too. Not why I went with Stark."

"You're taking risks for me," Steve said quietly. "'m not an idiot, and I don't even think--" he broke off to cough. "I don't even think I can do much on this one."

"Oh, I'll still need transvouchers and probably some credit workups. You got that in you, right?"

"Whatever we need, boss." Steve waved his beat up tablet in the air. "Me and Sylvia here, we can draw anything."

"Yeah, so… you think you can work up a manifest --leave the registry blank for now. I'm still, you know, negotiating who's gonna fly us."

Steve scowled. "Negotiating? You mean blackmailing?"

"Not on this one. Working for Stark is a whole other kind of problem. Still, I have a line on a guy that I _know_ took a contract with Fury and Romanova once. And since the dock says they're still on Stark's cruiser--"

"Yeah, because they've _never_ snuck off a ship ever."

"Okay, but I'm trusting their intel. Anyway, I'm hoping he'll take my call." Clint stood. "Just see what you can get started, right? We're heading into the Jotun/Asgard cluster. Well. Into the no-man's between 'em."

"Seriously?" Steve shook his head. "This is worse than I thought. We shoulda taken the Xavier job. Low risk, low drama, no particular likelihood anyone gets impatient or cranky or, I don't know, hungry? and decides to invent a sleek, sexy, expensive way to take our heads off or something."

"It'll be fine, Stevie. You need implants, we're family, this is the job we're doing, capice?"

"Don't call me Stevie. Hey Darce, how'd you let him even get an eye on this one, anyway?"

Darcy shrugged from where she was sifting through netlerts on oversupply contacts. "You need the implants, babe. Like it or not, which I know you don't. Plus, I think we'll have enough left over to think about at least a baby point A to point B ship of our own. With a rockin' sound system."

"Oh, well. Priorities. I see how you have some of those." Steve sighed. "This is a _bad_ idea, but if we're doing it--hey, can you coax the 'ceiver to connect with the masterbase? I need another look at the Asgard timestamp art if we're going through the Divide."

Darcy winked at him. "Already working on it."

\-- 

"So, Delray won't do it for sure," Darcy said. "That's the last of the knowns, and it just leaves this Coulson guy. When d'you think he'll get back to us?" She held up her glass for the waitress and left it in the air while she ran her finger down the list. "Yeah, I got nothin', C. And I don't know about you, but my level of want in the area of going back to that douchebag and saying we need a ship after all is temperature of deep space negative." Her glass filled and she brought it down, started to tip it into her mouth, then stopped and sniffed it cautiously. "Uh. Either that same douchebag just bought this place out and replaced the swill with delicious, or I've been poisoned and I'm hallucinating."

"Neither, Miss Lewis," said a guy who was definitely not the waitress. Darcy looked up, then looked at Clint, who had the guy sighted but wasn't shooting (yet).

"So, your explanation is?" She had to give him credit; he seemed totally unconcerned about the gun, although everyone else in the joint was slinking toward the door. Smart people; Clint's snatch-and-grab skills were only exceeded by his ability to shoot through the drown of a thimble at a couple hundred meters in a monsoon, then spin and take out its brother in the dark. So either the guy was not bright, or he was just very good at calm. She was betting on the latter.

"I just don't like swill. I made an improvement." He set down the pitcher and turned the other glasses on the table face-up as he look over her head at Clint. "Phil Coulson. Shall we talk?"

Darcy narrowed her eyes and examined him for a minute. "How'd you get in here?"

"I realize it's unconventional, but I made thorough use of the door." Coulson pulled out a chair and sat down, crossing one leg over the other and clasping his fingers together. "Are you in charge of terms? I was under the impression Mr. Barton was the team leader."

"I do paperwork," Darcy said. "Clint shoots people."

"A fair division of labor, I suppose."

"That, and when he does the paperwork, his propensity for shooting people gets about a hundred times worse."

Coulson chuckled. "Barton, is this one of those shooting-people times, or shall we discuss your needs?"

Darcy glanced over at Clint, who watched him for another minute, then nodded and put his gun down. Which didn't mean he wasn't still ready to shoot, but Darcy didn't think he was going to. For one thing, they needed this guy. For another, she was pretty sure a guy who poured good beer while suffering Clint's focus like that was probably someone they wanted on their team anyway. "So. You saw the contract," she said.

"Yep. And what I want to know is why you're taking it."

"Cash," Darcy said easily.

"Mm," Coulson said. He brought his chin up and back down, more rocking his head than nodding it. "You've been scraping by for years--not because you do bad work; you don't. Why now?"

Clint pulled out the other chair, tucked his gun (well. _That_ gun) in the back of his waistband, and spun the chair to sit with his arms crossed on the back. Darcy rolled her eyes at the obvious display of biceps, but said nothing.

"This time, we need it," Clint said. "Why isn't all that relevant to your part."

"No, it is," Coulson said. "It has everything to do with why I would choose to accept or not accept your sublet."

"What, you're a taxi service with a conscience?" Clint asked.

"Oh, I usually provide a bit more than taxi service," Coulson said. "Although that's the sort of thing I discourage clients from reporting in the 'lerts."

"You've worked for Fury," Clint said.

"Very true."

"He and his ...consort aren't exactly known for being on the up-and-up."

Coulson rocked his head again. "But for that particular contract, their cause was just. So what's yours?"

"The job is to retrieve Chitauri artifacts," Darcy said. "Well, a particular artifact."

"Yes, I gathered that was likely, in that part of space," Coulson shrugged. "Not that anyone knows that much about their homeworld other than where it is. However, it's for Stark, and he's made it plain on a number of streams that he's in the market. He's ...obsessive."

Clint pressed his lips together. "Fine. Our friend--our teammate--needs medical shit that falls outside what the Consortium would allow on the standard. We've scraped a long time, but, okay, he'll deny this and he'll look really honest while he does it, but he can't wait. I'm not totally sure he can actually wait for us to be done with _this_ job."

"That's Steve Rogers, your forger."

"My friend and conscience," Clint corrects. "...and my forger. Who the hell _are_ you, anyway?"

"Guy with a ship," Coulson says. "Who do I look like?

"Someone with a deep fondness for numbers and rules," Clint said. "I'm hoping the latter is flexible."

"I like rules, but only when they're good ones. And I think we should move this conversation to include your unwell friend."

"He'll deny--"

"No, not about whether he needs the treatment. I believe you. I have some files he can probably use, and we're going to need good documents to pull this off." He picked up his glass. "We should drink this, as long as it's here. No sense--"

"Wasting good beer," Darcy said with him. She picked up her glass and drank it down.

Phil waved at the waitress, who had retreated behind the bar at some point, and dropped thirty cred on the table, then stood smoothly and offered Darcy a hand up. "Lead the way."

–

"No. Fucking. Way." Darcy dropped her bag in the ship's entryway while Clint was busy admiring the old-school construction and a couple of updates he could see from here. He was no expert in design or mechanics, but it was clear to him that even with the updates, he'd still be _able_ to handle this thing in a pinch, which he approved of. No sense making a ship less accessible if you didn't have to, right? He looked up to see what she was hollering about just as she said, "Janie!" 

Jane turned around. "Darcy? Phil! You didn't tell me it was Darcy!"

Coulson sighed. "I'm reasonably sure I did, Jane, but I did note you were heavily absorbed in your swivels at the time."

Darcy ran and hugged Jane, then stepped back and asked, "Swivels? Wait, I thought you were working on some kind of bridge thing?"

"Oh, I was, but first I met Phil on a site visit where I _thought_ I'd be able to put together some of the hammer anomaly data, but that just introduced more problems and I couldn't make the curve make any sense. Well, I probably could have, eventually, but anyway I couldn't make it work fast enough, so I changed focus. It's all about the peculiarities of junction spaces and reflective--well. For the last year I've been working on a way to alter how we adjust the ratios without having to spin down the turbines or drop to normal space, which will allow us to move faster and, if I've accounted for everything, which I think I have, we can get through radiation clouds and, um, well, lots of other things where now we can't take the chance on having to drop down. But then, I have to figure out how to ensure mechanical stability, and--"

"Jane? I have no idea what you're talking about, except I remember you mentioned the hammer thing before. Otherwise: totally lost. It feels like home." Darcy grinned. "But this is kind of awesome. Hey Coulson, I _know_ you didn't tell _me_ about how my old boss-slash-friend I haven't seen in three and a half years was going to be here, or how the hell she fell in with you, and since you seem to know all there is to know..."

"Oh, do the two of you know one another?" Coulson offered a bland smile. "I had no idea. And she's on my boat because she keeps the engines burning--what other reason is there?"

"There's the part where I keep your engines burning _in exchange_ for opportunities to get into Asgard space," Jane said.

"Jane's boyfriend is --is? was? is-- Asgardii," Darcy said.

Clint snorted and picked up Darcy's bag. "Well, either way, she hasn't been introduced to _me_ , or to Steve." He stuck a thumb in Steve's direction. "That's Steve. Clint Barton." He stuck out his hand and shook Jane's roughly. "And if I understood you to mean you have a way through the Divide without the risk, I think we can be friends."

Coulson nodded. "Barton, this is Jane Foster, absent-minded but often _single_ -minded genius and angel of my engines, when she does not fall asleep after a 42-hour science binge, which, Jane, is not going to happen today, is it?"

Jane rolled her eyes as she pulled her hand back in, then suddenly asked, "Hey! Did you guys bring snacks?"

"Got some jerky," Clint said.

Darcy shook her head. "I don't think she's going to count that as food. It doesn't involve a pastry or fruit."

Jane crinkled her nose. "Ew. Fine, back to the swivels it is. Oh, hey, you're going into the cluster! Shit! I have a million things to sync and frame before we try it--I should get back to work." She stepped through a hatch and then looked back. "It's good to see you, Darcy. And nice to meet the rest of you."

Clint pursed his lips. "So, is her thing going to work to get us there _now_ , or is this still all experimental?"

"Both. The tests are clean, but we haven't done a live full-ship full-speed exercise. Still, what's life without risk?"

"I feel like you've been reading my file," Clint said. "That might be the first line."

"And the last," Steve said. He was leaning against the bulkhead looking distinctly gray, and Clint sighed. 

"And the last," he agreed. "Just like yours says, what's life without stubbornly staying upright when you oughtta lie down."

Steve shrugged. "Don't got a bunk yet, and also--" he stopped for breath, then grinned and swung his portfolio a little. "There's work to do."

Coulson nodded and pressed a button on the comm panel on the end of an overhead storage compartment. "Maria, can you bring the package to guest quarters?"

Clint held up a hand. "Package?"

"Original imprints--out of date, so they'll still need his modifications, but there's space to work down below." He looked up and down Steve and shrugged. "There's a bunk there, too, and it makes no difference to me whether you're sitting or lying down, but it _does_ make a difference if you fall and hit your head."

"C'mon, Stevie," Darcy said. "Let's get you to bed."

Steve scowled, but followed Darcy, who was following Coulson. Clint brought up the rear as they made their way down a ladder and along an interior bulkhead toward the center of the hull.

\-- 

"Fire it up," Maria said. She glared at the interface for a long moment, then keyed in sequences with both hands. "Phil, your ship is resisting my authority again. You're sure there's no Starktech in their luggage?"

Phil looked at Clint, who shook his head. "I'm sure." He flipped up a switch cover, flipped the switch, and keyed a sequence of his own, to no response. He pressed the comm button. "Jane, Maria's trying to fire the engines, but we're getting nothing up here. Want to bring us up to speed? Literally?"

Jane's voice came back muffled and quiet, and Phil sighed and said, "Please repeat?"

"Sorry. Darcy brought me some of those little fried pies! So good! Hang on." A number of lights on the deck console lit and dimmed in a quick little cycle, then she came back on the line. "Sorry. Should be good now. Hey, did you know they made these in earthcherry?" A smacking sound indicated she might be sucking the filling out of the pie. Or licking her fingers.

"I wasn't aware." Phil looked at Maria, who was scowling at the console, but after a moment the first line of indicators went green, and the seals checked. "Now, try to keep us in the air? I hear pie is small comfort in a crash."

"Says you," Clint said. "If I gotta crash, I want pie."

"I'll keep it in mind. You see crashing as a challenge, though, if history tells the story."

"You been checking up on me again?" Clint watched Maria work through the checklist and crossed his arms. "Seriously, are we in trouble? Word is you guys are good, but I can't collect if I'm dead."

"Checking up would be an both overstatement and understatement. I researched a potential contract and business partner, using a number of legal and public resources. I always do. As to the engines and our flight plan, we _are_ good. Jane is a genius--"

"So's Stark, and I found him seriously irritating and obviously willing to go a whole other way than public and legal."

"Good point. Still, when either of them makes something and says it'll work, it'll work."

Clint nodded. "So, did she remember to make sure there were no spies? Because Stark's captain all but promised he'd try to sneak some in."

Coulson chuckled. "Even if she hadn't, and even if you didn't care, we don't like that kind of spying here. You have nothing to worry about."

"You like some _other_ kind of spying?" Clint watched the rest of the lights go green as everything powered up, and widened his stance against the shift of liftoff. "Because I notice you seemed to have a pretty good line on us before we ever met."

"As I said, all publicly available," Phil said. "And definitely not derived from anything as full of holes as feeler 'science' can be."

Clint nodded and swayed as the ship came about and accelerated. "The science is mostly _made_ of holes, yeah, but feelers are real. If you've gone looking for stories about me, you know I grew up itinerant, in the circus, and I saw some creepy, creepy horror shows put on by our feeler." He shuddered, and even though he tried to cover it with a shrug and an off-hand, "Sometimes it's shit, but then, so's everything," he was pretty sure Phil saw how much they freaked him out. 

Well, fine, his opinion about that was basically public anyway. And he could always shoot anything that set off the creepometer while they were on their little trip.

Phil shrugged back and returned his attention to his display, so Clint went to watch over Maria's shoulder. And surreptitiously keep part of his attention on Phil; he kind of liked the guy, even if he was some kind of spy. 

Maria looked up at him with a glare as he got into her space, but then gestured to the second chair, so he sat and kept an eye on the feeds from Jane's swivels.

\-- 

They were nearly to the switchover when Clint's commstick chimed. He looked at the origination sig and grimaced, but pressed the contact and waited for the holo of Stark's face to appear. "Stark. We're eight days of slow-ass in-system boredom out and _now_ you get in touch?" Boredom was the wrong word; he and Phil had spent most of the trip talking and playing ridiculous word games, but Stark didn't need to know that.

"Barton, who did you _talk_ to?" Stark asked. His face was tense and angry, right up against the feed. "You have competition, and you goddamn better get there _first_."

"Cool your core, Stark," Phil said, taking the stick out of Clint's hand. "We're well underway, and unless whoever you're worried about has the advantages we do--"

"Give me back Barton. Barton, how'd you get loverboy and his crazy chicks on your team, anyway? I mean, I was relieved to hear it and all, because that makes your chances a lot better, but I didn't know you had that kind of pull."

Clint took back the stick. "I said I'd handle the ship, which I did. Who I've subcontracted to and how isn't your concern. Also, from the look on his face, I suspect 'loverboy' isn't a designation Mr. Coulson appreciates."

"Yeah, yeah, well, he lives up to it, right? Have you seen that pilot of his?"

"...Has Miss Potts?" Clint did his best to ignore Phil's grin, even though he really wanted to grin back.

"Good point, and in any case, someone named Banner is trying for the same fucking artifact, so you better get there first."

"He won't catch us," Clint said, looking past the display for Phil's nod. "And he doesn't have anyone as good as my guy to get us into the near end of the cluster anyway. He's gonna have to go around the hard way."

"And," Phil said, turning the stick to face him, "we may have a strategic advantage he doesn't know about. And that's all I'm saying about that."

"What advantage?" Stark asked. "Is it the engine thing, which, okay, it's a good concept, and she should get a lot of cred--look. Banner's looking for my artifacts, only his goal is that he's trying to keep them away from some guy named Ross. You winning is better for him than this Ross guy, but he won't give them to _me_ , which isn't better for _me_.  
" _Your_ artifacts?" Clint turned the stick back. "I think you're getting ahead of yourself. And we're, what, thirty secs from the switch? Whatever else you have to tell me, spit it out."

Stark scowled. "How did Banner find out about your mission? Who else knows?"

"We'll watch our backs and get there first," Clint said. "Anything _practical_?"

Stark sighed. "My... my jester, I suppose, says there are any number of challenges getting into the sector you're looking for--don't say it; who knows how secure your end of this line is."

" _Secure_ ," Phil interjected.

"Your jester?" Clint asked.

"He may have come from that part of space. Got out before they threw him out. He's a teller of tales."

"But you think whatever he's warning you about is true?"

"I--"

And there they hit the switchover and lost the signal. Clint put the stick back in the seam pocket on his thigh and grabbed the overhead bar as they accelerated to full speed away from the base. "Don't suppose you know anything about this Ross character? Or Banner? Or the reason there would be problems going straight through as Jane plans?"

Phil looked up at Clint's hand and brought his up, too, although he didn't look to be struggling to stand. Not that Clint was either, but he figured braining himself on the corner of a cabinet before they even got rightfully out of the central system would look bad on his resume, and it never hurt to make up for reckless abandon in the field with a little caution shipboard, right? "There are always rumors," Phil said.

"About which?"

"A disproportionate number of missing ships. Planets with strange readings. You know."

"Awesome, but that's hardly news. We knew this was going to be a tough gig."

Phil nodded. "I doubt he has anything a lot more specific. Did you meet the jester, on the ship?"

"Nope."

"You might have without knowing. His tale-telling extends to appearance."

"Would he have impersonated Stark or his captain?"

"I believe not, but he still might have put himself in contact with you. He's... the worst combination of watch and feel."

Clint chewed on his lip. "I still don't see how you know all this. You don't _seem_ like the head of a large spy organization."

"It's always the quiet ones," Phil said with a grin. He nodded toward the case Clint had strapped to the console. "That bow of your is probably quiet, so you've seen a thing or two, too."

Maria looked over her shoulder. "You want to go make sure your Stevie has our papers in order? He said last night he was just about done, and the Point Heimdall border guard will probably start looking in the feeds as soon as we start heading that way for real. Rumor has it he doesn't need watchers to see us making changes that aren't legit once he starts looking."

Phil followed Clint through the hatch an down the ladder. "As to Banner, he probably won't be a problem," he said. "I've worked with him before."

"Of course you have. It's starting to freak me out how many people you know."

"Sorry. In any case, he's not a bad guy. Just a little... reactive. Ross's people, though, they're bad news."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, and in the event we run into them, which we won't unless Fury's a bigger fool than I think he is, not letting them get their hands on _anything_ interesting is probably the best call."

"Kay." Clint knocked on Steve's door once, then turned the handle. "Hey, how's the--shit, sorry." He backed back out. "Uh, Steve's otherwise engaged. Let's give him a minute."

Phil arched a brow. "Steve, who turns blue when the grav plates come on, is doing something to make you blush?"

"He's full of surprises." Clint knocked on the door again. "So, we just want to make sure the paperwork's in order," he shouted. 

"It is," Darcy said, opening the door and peering out. "Here."

Phil took the offered file and paged through the documents carefully. "These are good," he said. "Not that I expected otherwise."

"Yeah, great, can we get back to--"

"Be my guest," Phil said. "Try not to kill him before you get paid, though."

Darcy stilled. "Uh. He's not paying me."

"I meant all of you. By Stark. Personal behavior or side contracts aren't my concern."

"O...kay. I'll keep it in mind." She shut the door.

"Well. That went well," Phil said. "Are they always--"

" _Full_ of surprises," Clint said. "Believe it or not, that's new. Hey, on the subject of intrateam fucking, why does Stark think you and your crew--"

"Because we let people think so, of course--less hassling for all of us that way. Besides, it's what he would do, of course. Well, maybe not any more; he does seem devoted to Miss Potts."

"And are you? I mean, just because he thinks it, it doesn't follow he's wrong. Darcy said Jane had an Asgardii boyfriend, though, so if you're risking that kind of ire, you have balls of steel."

"Last I checked, my balls were: comprised of skin, blood, and testicles, generally fairly sensitive, and definitely not cold steel; and no, Jane isn't interested in the first place--you'd be closer to her speed, with the biceps there--and Maria isn't exactly my type."

Clint blinked. "If there's a socially-appropriate response to that sentence, I have no fucking idea what it is," he said at last.

"Too much?"

"Not a clue. Are you hitting on me or demonstrating that you're a lying android?"

"Statement of fact, all the way around," Phil said.

"So, you neither confirm nor deny."

Phil chuckled. "We should get back up to the cockpit, start feeding these into the system," he said. "And in case Maria runs into anything she can't handle."

Clint followed him back up, biting his lip as he contemplated whether he did or did not want Phil to be hitting on him. He was leaning toward 'did'. And trying not to laugh at the notion of Maria not being able to handle something; so far except for Jane's idiosyncratic engines, he was under the impression she was frighteningly competent at everything.

\-- 

The border crossing was easy--possibly too easy, since Clint wasn't completely sure the guard was fooled by Steve's work. Still, he wasn't going to complain if maybe he was; Steve was good and their mission wasn't actually to do any damage, so on the whole, it was _kind_ of legit. They were into the narrow leading strip of Asgard space without a hitch, and Jane was working the numbers now for the best local solution for her engines.

"Does she always keep refining the numbers until you're already past the point you ought to have started at?" Clint asked.

Darcy sighed. "Coulson, didn't you give her firm parameters? Because she needs those."

Phil pressed the comm button. "Jane, we're ready when you are..."

"Yeah, okay," Jane said. "Be right up." The comm squealed as she closed the connection and Clint winced. 

"I didn't even know it was still possible to make them make that sound," he said.

"My ship is not to be made fun of," Phil said. "I've made a lot of modifications on her myself."

"Who's making fun?" Jane asked. She went to the console behind Maria and started fiddling with dials. "All right, I think we're ready."

"We're _all_ ready," Phil said. He managed to put enough fond exasperation into his tone that it really did sound like irritation, but Clint thought it was actually mostly fond. He drummed his fingers on the armrest of his seat and tried not to be impatient, but waiting was never his favorite, and that was most of what there had been for him to do so far. The ship wasn't even big enough to have a shooting range of any kind at all, and impromptu arrangements when a hole in the hull would be a disaster were just not worth the risk.

Jane pressed three buttons, turned to watch a readout, and slid a pair of controls up slowly, then sat down. "Here we go."

\-- 

"What happened?" Clint asked. His head felt fuzzy and his chest hurt.

"We crashed," Maria said.

He looked up. "Seriously? But we just started. What even--" He looked down at himself and noticed a bleeding scrape on his arm and realized the chair's frame had dented inward to cause it.

Jane pushed her hair back off her face and punched buttons furiously. "I have no idea," she said disconsolately. "According to this, everything worked perfectly. Exactly as it should have. No flaws, no trouble reports, no overloads..." She punched more buttons and let her hair fall in her eyes again as her brow crinkled. "But it says we're still in flight."

Maria shook her head. "So's the big board." She nodded toward a monitor. "Exteriors, though--" She nodded the other way. The image on the screen showed a planetary surface. Or at least a lunar one, and one with plant life. "Nothing about that picture is registering on sensors. No grav, no contact, no nothing, except that exterior readings show atmosphere."

Clint scratched his aching head. "So, we're in open space on a living planet?"

"That's what the 'puter says," Maria replied. She smacked the side of her console, bringing up a small shower of sparks that only turned to a small open flame. "Damn." She tossed her jacket over the flame to smother it and then went back to trying to make sense of the readings and maybe get some more.

Phil pressed his handkerchief to the cut over his eyebrow and looked at Jane. "Maybe you should go see if there's better data directly from the engines."

"Are you guys all right up there?" Darcy's voice came from the speaker. "I hope? Because flying ships is not in any way on my CV."

Clint reached for the button slowly. "We're a little shook up, but in one piece. You? And Steve, if he's with you."

"Stevie's wheezin'," she said, "but not a _lot_ worse than usual. I'm good." 

"You got his O2?" Clint asked.

"Yep, on it, but the rest of the kit got crunched, so unless there's any class of alveo-stim type thing on board, that's the best we're gonna do. So unless you need me to paperwork the shit out of whatever hit us..."

"We think that would be a planet, or nothing, or both, and you're fine where you are."

"A planet? Yeah, I didn't bring a 2773A," Darcy said. "And even if I had, I'm pretty sure _entire_ celestial bodies aren't covered. So. Coulson, drugs?"

Maria jabbed the button. "There's a general stimulant in the first aid kit in the mess, but unless we got a resupply in while I wasn't looking, which we didn't, we probably just have the one that comes standard. That do you?"

"Awesome. Better than nothing, anyway. I'll get him going on that then come up and see if I can be useful up there. Darcy out," Darcy said. 

"Clint, we're fine," Steve said after a moment. His breathing was pretty labored, but he didn't sound panicked like he often did when things really went to shit in his body, so Clint figured he was looking at at least a few hours before they really had a problem. "Do your thing."

Clint nodded for no good reason and looked at the screen again. "So, you have any EV suits on this boat?"

Phil nodded. "Five, for us and a couple of passengers if we really need them."

"Good thing there are six of us. But no, in this case, I guess that should be enough. Because while these two try to get the 'puters to explain themselves, I think we gotta go out and look with our eyeballs."

"Damn. I hate EV in unknown circumstances," Phil said. "Actually, no, I just hate unknown circumstances. But you're right, we have to go figure out whether we are or are not in atmosphere, and if so what kind."

"I don't mind it, so I'll keep you company," Clint replied. "Plus, I'm pretty good at climbing shit and if word is to be believed, generally being a reckless dumbass, and if we gotta fight with physics, I throw a mean punch."

"Better than nothing," Phil told him.

"Jeeze. Damn good thing you're not the morale officer."

"Who says I'm not? Maria flies, and Jane has the engines. What's left for me?"

"Logistics. Mess hall. Supply. Armory."

"And morale."

"Oh, of course. And you're a natural, I can tell."

The cockpit door, naturally, was stuck shut, jammed by the impact, so it took Clint and Phil together to wrestle it open. Phil's jacket was gashed a lot worse than his head, and Clint found himself watching a narrow sliver of hard muscle flex between the edges of the fabric and wondering how, exactly, his biceps had rated a comment. Maybe Phil really _was_ hitting on him. 

In any case, he definitely wasn't just about the information or logistics, he decided, but he didn't say anything, just waved Phil through the door ahead of him once they shoved it out of the way and followed him to the locker.

–

The suits, as usual, were confining and uncomfortable, but then, Clint was pretty sure that beat flexible and porous. Still, not having full range of motion in his hips and shoulders was irritating, and the way the boots clunked and clicked as their magsoles hit the floor and lifted off was clumsy and annoying.

Still, he'd gotten to watch Phil strip off the jacket and with a frown ditch his t-shirt for a fresh one before he suited up. "I don't think the atmosphere will care about your grooming," he'd said.

"Yes, and I'd agree with that, but just in case we find ourselves face to face with hostiles, I like to at least look like I'm competent with a comb," Phil had told him.

Clint hadn't really been able to argue with that, and might, although he'd deny it if asked, have smoothed down his hair when Phil turned away. He wasn't the brains anyway, right?

Finally, they were suited and green-lit, and Phil shrugged. "Let's get it over with."

Clint led the way to the outer hatch, trying not to get distracted by the replay in his head of the ink on Phil's shoulders--military and old, faded, and at least one obviously memorial--of the taut lean belly and wiry shoulders, of the unassuming confidence with which he'd shucked his clothes, which Clint hadn't expected given the conservative dress and manner. Well, being surprised was good, and Clint had already been pretty sure there was a lot to like about Phil.

When he got to the outer hull, he stopped to make sure the inner hatch was secure before turning the old-fashioned wheel lock. "We ready?"

Phil cranked the interior door shut and checked the lights. "Yep. Let's do it."

Clint started to turn the lock. "So, what're we looking for, do you think?"

"I think the cameras are right, but hell if I know what that means, so your guess is as good as mine," Phil said, stepping up to help. The hatch released, and Clint pushed it open, then looked out onto the dry surface before them.

"Okay," he said, "Guess there's something here." He crouched and leaned out to look below them, into what should be the ground, but as far as he could tell the ship had just sort of _merged_ with the soil at a wonky angle. Or something. It looked like the ground was at a forty degree angle, but it didn't feel like it was a hill or a cliff. Clint straightened back up. "It might not be very solid," he said. "You got a line?"

Phil rummaged in the locker against the airlock wall. "Here." He tied one end to the bar next to the hatch and handed Clint the other.

"If I sink, you'll pull me up, right?"

"That would be the point of the rope, yes."

"Smartass." Clint knotted the other end into a loop at his waist and stepped gingerly out. 

The ground was spongy, but solid, and after a few steps Clint experimentally jumped off with both feet to see what happened. He landed with a thump, so he crouched again and tried to pick up a handful of the soil. It felt like rock, although the sparse plant life seemed fairly normal to his experience and when he did pry a piece loose it was light enough to almost float back down to the ground. He didn't feel especially light himself, so he didn't think it was gravity, and another attempt at a jump confirmed that he fell at a relatively normal rate. What the fuck. He turned and walked along the hull several meters, to the end of the rope, peering underneath periodically, then went back to the doorway where Phil was waiting.

"Update: apparently your ship cuts through rock like butter or something, or this place had a ship-shaped hole in it in exactly the right place. Nothing looks all that crushed, and at least over here there aren't any visible holes in the hull."

"Seems unlikely."

"Which?"

"All the options." 

Clint untied his line carefully and let it fall, watching to snatch it up again in case he was only solid while he was tied to the ship (it sounded ridiculous in his head even as he thought it, but what the hell, nothing about this situation made sense). He looked at Phil, who was examining a readout in the forearm of the suit.

"Looks like we have air," Phil said. "Not great oxygen content, so maybe we should leave the suits on so we can use the breather periodically, but it'll last longer if we mostly breathe the atmosphere."

"It stable?"

"My readings match Jane's from twenty minutes ago. I don't think we have a lot more to work with."

Clint shrugged and turned off the breather in the suit, then popped the hood. "So far, no burning," he said. "Which first, exploring or examining the rest of the hull?"

"Let's go once around for good measure, then explore." Phil tapped a series of commands into his readout, then frowned and glanced to the right. "The hull check will be a lot more efficient once Jane gets the computers back to full function anyway. Once we've done a once-around of the ship, we should go that way."

"How come?"

"Energy readings consistent with human settlement."

Clint checked for any sort of standard direction cues--rotation, sun, gravitational information, then sighed and decided to designate that direction east. He told the suit's compass as much, and looked at Phil again. "You go round. I'm going up and over."

"Of course you are. There's climbing involved."

"You _did_ read my file."

"I did. I approved of it, though, or I wouldn't have taken the contract."

"Oh, well in that case. By the way, _your_ file seems to be profoundly incomplete. Your doing?"

"Could be."

"Maybe I should hire you to do a little surgery on mine."

"Wouldn't be ethical." Phil grinned. "Can't go messing up official records willy nilly, right?"

Clint flipped him a rude gesture and switched the mag surfaces on the boots forward. "See ya on the other side," he said as he started up. The ship wasn't a big one, all engine and quarters with a tiny cargo hold and not a lot of storage, so it wasn't a long trip, just an up and over. Clint stopped at the top to look around at miles of blue-green scrubby grass and hundreds of stubby shrubs in the rocks. The landscape was disorienting, somehow appearing to be all hill but no valley (what? He blinked and looked again, then decided to just pretend it made better sense than it did). Finally, he walked the length of the ship to the tail, and then moved forward again along the flank as he came down.

"Anything of interest?" Phil asked, leaning with his arms crossed against the hull as Clint came into view. He'd shucked out of the top of the suit, leaving it bunched at his waist, and Clint admired the t-shirt all over again as he descended. 

"Nope. Or, nothing that makes much sense," Clint said. "No physical signs of cities, no dwellings, to real trees, no creatures stirring…"

"Not even a mouse?"

"Nope."

Phil nodded. "I haven't seen anything either, but something's giving me the willies. We should go."

Clint hit the ground and turned the magnets back off. "Eastward ho, then." 

Phil pulled up the suit top again as they started off, saying, "Just in case." Clint sighed and left his on, too.

\-- 

Two hours was a long time to walk in silence, but Clint didn't feel like he knew Phil well enough to chat, and Phil seemed mostly inclined to check in every fifteen minutes with Maria, having conversations whose near halves Clint could hear (communications, engines, staff health), but apparently on a private channel, which was annoying.

Finally, he said, "For a woman that's not your type, you sure do talk to her a lot."

"She's my pilot, and my friend," Phil said. "Not that she has much to report."

"Still, she's telling you _something_. Also, if you're going to check on how people are doing, would it kill you to tell me how _my_ guys are?"

Phil blinked. "Oh. Sorry." He reached over and adjusted a setting on Clint's suit, then pulled off a glove and printed on the glass. "It didn't occur to me. Then, I should bring you up to speed. Steve is hanging on, Maria's pissed off at her inability to get comms working for any outside contact, and Jane says we're still traveling at speeds she would expect if her swivels were working but we had substantial drag."

"Like, say, a _planet_?"

"Could be."

Clint pointed. "Hey. I see steam."

"Where?" Phil squinted. "I don't see it."

"Not a lot, but it's there. We should bear south if we want to make for it," Clint added unnecessarily. Obviously, he was pointing south of their current route. 

Phil nodded and adjusted his path around a clump of broad-leafed shrubs.

"What d'you suppose those are?" Clint asked a few minutes later. He pointed at a group--one of several they'd seen--of short, squat cylinders with weird curved lines from their centers to their edges on the top and barely-visible corkscrew markings down the sides. They were roughly four feet tall as wide as Clint's arm was long.

"No idea. Bar stools? Work surfaces?" Phil suggested.

"For the zero beings we've run across?"

"Natural phenomenon?"

Clint stopped and considered the nearest grouping, then glanced back over. "They're more frequent as we continue. Maybe they're a fungus or something, grows near the energy reading?"

"Could be."

"The markings, though. They remind me of something." Clint went over and crouched before the group. "I feel like they're looking at me." He ran a finger along the surface, then leaned to the side and back the other way. "Hey Phil?"

"Yeah?" Phil had come right up behind him. 

"What's this?" Clint ran his hand down the side of the cylinder, feeling every rib of the corkscrew push down and flip back up under his gloved fingers, then pointing at subtle change in the top of the cylinder. 

"No idea." Phil crouched next to another one and did the same thing, then shrugged and used his other hand, still ungloved. Clint opened his mouth to object and reached for Phil's arm, but he was too late, and then the corkscrew had unfurled and spun forward, and he and Phil were standing trapped in the centers of what Clint found himself thinking of as man-sized springs, flexible like the toy he'd played with as a child. 

With occasional and apparently convertible arms and eyes.

"Uh, Phil?"

"I think they didn't like that."

"Or they did. You think they're trying to eat us?"

"Suit's not registering any damage."

"Kay. You think Maria might want to know we're--shit!" Clint flailed briefly as the spring--Jesus, it _was_ like a slinky--holding him dropped down somewhat and then bounded into the air, flipping him. "Want to know we're being _slinkied to somewhere, shit shit shit!_ " Clint tried to look around and determine, while the spring was the most expanded, whether Phil was coming with him, and then suddenly they stopped. Clint groaned and tapped the comm. "Phil?"

"Yep," Phil said. "Still with you, not a fan of that mode of transport, trying to alert Maria to our position."

Clint was about to respond when, as quickly as they'd been trapped, they were let go. The spring-beings whirled loose off them, and then bumped up against each other, interlacing as Clint started backing away as fast as he could.

It wasn't fast enough. Phil had turned and was flat-out running, so Clint followed suit, but the springs overtook them and pounced.

And Clint's stomach slowly turned as he realized he was bound up tight and 'arms' were breaking free out of the spiral to caress his face. "Phil!"

There was a groan, and then Phil said, "Clint, are they on your face?"

"Yeah."

"Are they talking to you?"

"What? No!

Phil was silent for a long enough moment that Clint was starting to worry, then said, "You're not going to like this."

"Tell me something I _don't_ know."

"They apparently communicate by touch. Like a feeler but both ways."

Clint shuddered at the notion, but tried to slow his heart rate and focus on the wispy little fingers on his face. He tried to listen or think at them or ...how the hell did one acquire a new sense? He was getting nothing.. "Maybe I'm immune," he said. "What are they saying?"

There was another pause, and then Phil said, "This one appears to be pointing out to me that I have fabulous abs."

"Uh. Okay, you do, but are you telling me a giant slinky is _hitting on you_?"

"Nope. I think... It feels like it's telling me you... like it's trying to help _you_ hit on me."

Clint gaped, then winced as the fingerlets prodded his face and one slithered down his neck, leaving a weird feeling of suction and the rasp of a cat's tongue along the way. "Okay, if they've kidnapped us in order to act as, like, galactic yentas or something, this has just shot all the way to number one on the weird contracts list," he said. "Also, this is really fucking uncomfortable."

"With you on all counts, and you could have just _said_ something about your interest in my abs," Phil said. "Also, I think it's confused by the cut on my head."

Clint felt a wave of nausea at the notion of a newly-found alien being prodding around in a bleeding wound. "Not trying to suck your blood, is it?"

"No... it keeps prodding at my eye and then at my forehead. Maybe it's confused by the eye."

"Fine, it's point-five on the list. Higher than number one. And maybe I thought hitting on you three seconds after we met was unprofessional."

Phil chuckled, and then the finger-tendrils merged back into the coils and Clint was free again. He looked around for Phil, but only found the slinkies--but one was now six feet tall, so he concluded Phil was still trapped. 

Well. This was a stupid time not to have a gun.

"So, they let me loose," Clint said.

"They told me."

"Okay. What's next?"

The side of the slinky pulled apart, and Phil's face looked out at him. "They've invited us to supper."

"Oh, of course they have. Would it be rude to say no?"

"Probably, but they're not pushing. I think they'll let us go."

"So why haven't they?"

The slinky spun and let Phil out, then a single tendril ...patted him on the forehead? Maybe it was a motherly smooch. Clint wasn't sure. Phil shrugged. "Evidently they have."

Clint tilted his head to one side. "They healed your cut," he said. He stepped closer and examined Phil's brow. "It's gone. No scab, no scar."

Phil put up his still-bare hand to feel for himself. "Huh. You?"

"My only injury is covered," Clint said. He thought about it a minute, then unlatched the suit's top enough to pull his arm free. "...But it's gone, too. Uh."

Phil reached to run his finger along Clint's forearm. "This was where?" 

"Yeah."

"No pain?"

"Yours hurt?"

"No, but I'm comparing." He looked up. "Fabulous arms. Should we talk about our comparative fabulousness?"

"Shut up, it's true, not my fault, and also I think we have bigger things to worry about, like the fact that in looking for faster transit, we seem to have found a race of alien slinkies with magical healing properties."

Phil snorted. "That's exactly what I would put in my report, were I reporting back to someone."

"Are you? Is that why you're so well-informed--you're a spy?" Clint asked the question before he thought, then frowned. It had occurred to him earlier that it was at least possible that a guy with the information supply Phil seemed to have might be a spy, but he'd concluded he'd be better equipped and let it go. Now, though, the idea didn't seem to bother him much, and to boot, he knew it wasn't true. "Wait, no, you aren't, any more."

Phil cocked a brow at him. "I'm not?"

"But you were. Once."

Phil pursed his lips. "I think this is where I once again say I can neither confirm nor deny."

"And yet, I know. Maybe they told me? Maybe I wasn't as immune as I thought?" Clint shook his head. "Point two on the weird scale. I think we should get back to the ship."

"You got a good read on where we are, relative?"

Clint checked the suit's compass. "Yeah. Yeah, it's a ways, though. They brought us past the base."

Phil sighed. "Then I guess we'd better get moving." He started off at a jog back the way they'd come. Clint waved at the slinkies and followed.

\--

They'd been running for two hours when Clint squinted at the hulk of the ship, still at least fifteen minutes distant, and swore.

"What?"

"They're at the ship."

"The slinkies?"

"Yeah. Climbing all over it and I don't know what else." Clint started running faster, a little surprised when Phil kept up without much complaint, turning the breather on for keeps and jamming the end of the tube in his mouth so he wouldn't have to worry about oxygen content so much. Phil did the same.

"Doesn't feel any diff'ent," He said around the tube. "Should."

Phil shrugged and kept running.

"Try t'get Maria?"

"Have been." Phil held up his sleeve. "No response."

"Awesome."

They ran silently for twelve more minutes, then slowed as they approached the ship. As they approached what appeared to be _Steve_ coming around the stern with a guy in tattered loose trousers and a raggedy shirt.

Clint looked at Phil. "What--"

"Hey, Clint," Steve said with a wave. He was taller, bare-chested, his skin pink and firm, and he stopped to pat one of the slinkies on its top. "We made friends."

"I see that." Clint shook his head. "I guess they healed your wounds too? And gave you ridiculous shoulders?"

"Apparently."

"Maria," Phil said into the comm. "Maria, can you hear me?"

"Comm's out. We're working on it. Well, the girls are," Steve said cheerfully. He stuck his head in the door. "Hey guys, the bosses are back." He turned back to face them. "This is Bruce. He lives here."

Bruce pointed back the way they'd come. "I think the guys took you past me. They picked me up on the way back and said you'd crashed."

"They..." Clint frowned. "So, they're definitely friendlies?"

"They're definitely _friendly_ ," Bruce said. "They tell me they fixed you guys up too, although, what was wrong with you? Just the air?"

Phil nodded. "Thought it was a little too easy to breathe."

Bruce peered at him more closely. "Coulson? I thought you were out of the game?"

"Not out. Just on the fringes," Phil said. He waved back and forth between Bruce and Clint. Clint Barton, Bruce Banner. Clint's a treasure hunter and adventure seeker. Bruce is... what are you these days, Banner? Last I heard you'd vanished from all the 'lerts and feeds."

"I did. Best job description I've got these days is hermit."

"Fair enough. Bruce is a hermit."

"He's the one Stark didn't want to have his artifact? So, how did we run into him here?" Clint shook his head. "And what the hell happened to Steve?"

"It's kind of complicated," Bruce said. "I was thinking we could uncrunch your ship first, and then dinner."

Clint looked at Phil, who looked resigned, but a little confused, and nodded. "Not like I have a choice, is it?"

"Sure you do. We could uncrunch your ship and then you guys could go on. Stark has issues, and I don't even _want_ his artifacts. And here, I don't usually do any harm." 

Clint stepped back into the hatch he'd left hours earlier and shucked the EV suit entirely, then went up front to find out what Darcy knew about the whole situation. If anyone had put together the pieces, it was probably her.

–

"You know what's weird about this, boss?"

"What's that, Darce?" Clint ducked his head under the 'wave and came up grimacing; there was really no substitute for actual water, but it was, marginally, better than nothing.

Darcy looked over her shoulder. "I've been looking through Jane's samples, and two things. One, the Slinkies are actually, like, _related_ to Bruce."

"Uh, like, they're his children or something?"

"No--more like they're pieces of him."

"Ooookay."

"I know, it's wacky. I was just trying to figure out how that made sense, though--okay, so I'm not a scientist."

"Yeah, but you play one sometimes, if the price is right." Clint pulled a fresh shirt over his head and gestured with one spinning finger for her to turn around so he could ditch the towel.

"Not like you haven't seen more of me recently," she said. "Only fair to get a glimpse of that ass."

Clint snorted. "D, you have Stevie and his brand new shiny wonderbody, and given, you know, the reason I recently saw more of you, do _not_ even tell me you don't plan to take that thing for a ride. I will pay you one million shiny cred if the abs that go with those shoulders aren't everything you could possibly need to see."

"Yeah, okay, but still." She turned with a huff and added, "Anyway, Jane's all focused on _how_ they do what they do, and she said something about how it's not environmental, and then Bruce said no, they weren't native, so I asked the 'net to run a couple of things down."

Clint stripped off the grimy pants he'd worn on their excursion and tossed them under the 'wave along with his shirt, then got out his other pair. "And the 'net says they're not native because they're pieces of a hermit from our own part of space, but can do things that make zero sense even for feelers, which they kind of but not quite are?"

"Something like that." She turned again. "You better be decent by now. But the other thing is, they're a partial match to the parameters of the artifact Stark asked us for in the first place."

Clint frowned. "That doesn't make any fucking sense."

"It's Stark," Phil said from the doorway. "He's a genius and a billionaire, but he's not always the soul of truth." He shrugged. "Banner says the invitation stands, and if we have questions, we might as well all go a a group, don't you think?"

"Unless it's a clever scheme to get us all in one place and poison us."

"So far they've healed cuts, improved our adaptation to the local atmosphere, and saved your man Steve from his own body--plus, if it holds up, saved him from surgery that isn't exactly known for phenomenal success. I think if he meant to poison us, he could probably have just told the creatures to do it."

"Maybe the Slinkies are gentle souls and he's letting them lull us," Darcy said. "I try not to be gullible. Or lull-able, I guess."

"Maybe." Phil agreed. "Still, he seems to have more of a sense of how this planet works tan anyone, and before he disappeared, his reputation didn't have any evil-genius attributes."

Clint stuck his head into the 'wave once more for good measure and picked up his clean clothes to toss in his bag. "If you're in, I'm in," he said. "I wanna know why Stark sent us out here and I don't think I wanna wait to see if I can get a meeting with Miss Potts and ask her."

"Also, you'd never get a meeting; she's a busy woman." Phil stepped down into the room and looked at Darcy's notes. "Maybe you should go find Steve and tell him to spruce up. Uh, and see if Jane has any of Thor's shirts in her cabin. They should fit."

Darcy gave a lackadaisical salute and unfolded her legs to get out of the chair, scooping up a tablet and ruffling Clint's hair. "See you for dinner, then, boss?"

"Yep."

"We'll be right along," Phil added.

Clint watched her go, then arched a brow. "We will?"

Phil scrolled through the notes she'd left on the screen here--a copy, but clearly not anything she meant to keep from him. "She's not a scientist, you say?"

"Nope. Closer than I am, but mostly what she's good at is taking information and arranging it to make sense. I don't think there's a name for that." Clint watched as Phil scrolled some more. "Why, you think she's not telling you something? Because she can be devious, but she's not particularly evil."

"What? No! I've just... I don't know if I'd have caught this. I could use someone like her, especially when--well. I'm getting ahead of myself again."

"You can't have her--I mean, she's hardly my property, but we've been a team for a while. I don't think she'd go."

Phil smiled gently. "You look after her, though."

"Maybe. She looks after me, too. And Stevie, who I am going to have to stop calling that because he could not possibly look less like a man in need of a nickname after whatever they did to him."

"Mm-hm." Phil tilted his head. "I don't think his ass is going to be a match for yours, though. Arms might."

Clint blinked. "Uh."

"You told _Darcy_ to turn around, not _me_. Simple factual analysis again," Phil said. "Plus, if I keep being subtle you'll be back off my boat and then how will I get you back if not with fabulous sex?"

"Besides scare off all the other available ships again?"

"Didn't scare them by a show of force, just explained why this trip was dangerous," Phil said. "You probably won't take anything dangerous again for a while if you have Stark's money and don't need to spend it on Steve."

"If his transformation holds," Clint replied.

"Banner says it will."

"You ask specifically?"

"Thought we should tell him if it was temporary."

"True." 

Phil offered his elbow. "Dinner?"

"If you think I'm taking your arm like some kind of damsel in a corset--"

"I think we'll talk about types of clothing we'd like to see each other in later."

Clint rolled his eyes. "Corsets are off the table, but if we're having that conversation, I think there should be blow jobs involved first."

"See what I can arrange," Phil said. 

"See that you do." Clint tossed his folded clothes onto his pack and brushed past Phil into the main hold. 

\-- 

Bruce looked at the specs Darcy offered and sighed. "You know he knows I have that thing already, right?"

"Uh, no?" Clint looked up from his plate, then glanced at Phil. "Well, _I_ don't anyway."

"We weren't sure," Phil said. "It was a possibility."

"Why is it my own fucking job seems to have been arranged by everyone in the world but me?" Clint asked. "I like to think I'm not a _complete_ idiot."

"You're not," Phil said. "But I have intel sources that are hard to beat. You've met some of them."

Clint scowled. "You and Fury are a team, aren't you?"

"Not in any sense other than shared resources," Phil said. "But we do share quite a bit of those." He looked across at Bruce. "So, if he knows you have it, what's he want?"

"Me."

"So you think I'm supposed to, what, tie you up and bring you back for him?" Clint waved a hand around as he finished the thought. "I'd rather not, unless you're into that sort of thing, but I'm just trying to figure out if I'm getting paid for these shenanigans. I guess..." He looked at Steve. "I guess it's not that urgent, but I'd rather not be wasting my time."

Bruce nodded. "He doesn't know the whole story. He doesn't know about the other guys."

"The Slinkies?"

"That's not exactly what they call themselves, but it'll do." Bruce picked up another forkful of what Clint had decided was some kind of vegetarian noodle thing. It wasn't bad. "He knows why I came out here, though, and he built my engines. Plus, he has to be aware things moved around once I got here."

"Question is, then, are you going to go?" Clint asked.

Bruce shrugged. "That your only question?"

"No. What the hell are the Slinkies?"

"This is going to sound a little insane, but then, I wasn't that sane when I got here. Too many... too many feelings, is one way to put it."

"What's that mean?"

"Used to be a feeler, freelancing on Stark's dime and others. I was good at it, too. Don't panic."

Clint pushed away from the table. "Don't do anything to make me."

Phil set a hand on his wrist. "I don't think he will," he said. He was looking at Bruce. "You're the one in Ross's playbook. He did something..."

"He made me unable to lose all the pieces of people I was taking in," Bruce said. "It made me a little--a lot, actually--explosive. I don't know what his end game was, but it doesn't matter. I left."

"What's that got to do with the Slinkies?"

"The artifact separated out... they're feelers, but with no particular intent other than fixing--that's the artifact's basic job: repairing things. So they watch, then they feel, and then they fix. They're full of simple, uncomplicated emotions and basically it makes them happy to make people feel good. It's why they're spring-shaped, I think. It's like they're just so happy they bounce."

"What'd you do with the rest?" Clint asked.

"You've seen them all."

Clint waved a hand impatiently. "The rest of the emotions. The messy ones."

Bruce looked at him. "Those, I kept. I'm always angry, but it's under control."

Clint stared. "Yeah, _that's_ gonna end well."

"Making a bunch of vicious furious globs of anger seemed like a bad idea. I mean, there were a few, but I destroyed them."

"So make and destroy more," Steve piped up. 

"Can't. The artifact kept making them until one day, it stopped. That was when I noticed I was no longer a feeler, either."

Darcy crinkled her nose. "Well, that sucks. Don't get me wrong, I don't like feelers, but it seems like if they fix people, they should fix you."

"I'd be back where I started."

"Maybe not," Phil said. "Maybe that's what Stark wants with the artifact--maybe he wants to reverse-engineer everything you've got going on out here."

"Can't be. He has no way of knowing how this played."

"Maybe he guessed. Seems like his style."

Bruce snorted rudely. "He'd probably kill you for suggesting any of his machinations were no better than a guess. Anyway. I'll go back, but not if Ross is in the game."

"Fine with us," Clint said, glancing at Phil. "Isn't it?"

"Definitely. I suspect Nick Fury is somewhere distracting the hell out of Ross and buying us time--and if you get in with Stark, his money will certainly offer some protection." Phil said. "Although I do need to understand how to get the ship out of the planet first."

Bruce smiled. "That's easy. We tell the Slinkies to let go of you." 

"Seriously?" Clint asked.

"Mostly. Uh, sorry about that." Bruce ducked his head and went back to eating.

\-- 

Clint looked up as the door opened. "Darce-- oh. Hi."

Phil leaned against the rounded edge of the door. "So, Darcy seems pretty content in with Steve. I _could_ bunk in with Maria or Jane to make a place for Banner and his friends, but..."

"Are you asking if you can move in with me?" Clint turned the chair around. "Don't you think that's the sort of thing that usually comes _after_ the fabulous blow jobs?"

"That the price of admission?"

Clint grimaced. "No. I don't do trades involving--"

"I know. Anyway, if you're actually not interested, I can--"

"Fuck, no. Get in here."

Phil came in and shut the door as the engines started to wind up overhead. " _Can_ it be the price of admission?"

Clint shook his head. "How about we play that by ear. Also, what do you think Stark meant about there being challenges out this way? Was he just winding me up, or..."

Phil considered for a minute, then jumped as a _clang_ sounded against the outer hull. He looked toward it and listened to the muffled thump and drag that seemed to follow, then reached over Clint's shoulder to key a sequence. "Uh, I think he meant this."

Clint looked at the image of an enormous man--Asgardii, no doubt--clinging to the outside of the hatch, working to pry it open. "What--"

"Jane's boyfriend appears to have found us."

"Oh, is _that_ all?" Clint stared as the guy managed to open the hatch from the exterior and then apparently seal himself in. No alarms went off, but a moment later _Jane!_ echoed through the ship.

"Yeah, I think it is." Phil sighed. "Which probably means I should go see to the engines until we're out of the cluster. I have a feel Jane is about to be profoundly distracted."

Clint stood. "But you just got here!"

"Captain's job is never done," Phil said.

"Want company?" Clint asked. 

Phil grinned. "Wouldn't mind it."

Clint opened the door and gestured him through it. "Also, if the engines behave, there's really no reason we can't make our own entertainment while we work..."

"For example, we could play cards," Phil said, starting up the ladder.

"Not exactly what I was thinking."

"Oh?"

"You just offered a blow job in exchange for a place in my bed. On your own damn ship. I feel like you're yanking my chain."

"Could be. Also, as I recall, you said there should _be_ blow jobs No specification was made as to relative positioning."

"I'll be more specific next time."

"I'll appreciate that."

Clint followed Phil into the engine room and looked around for Jane, who was nowhere to be found, then picked up a deck of well-thumbed cards. "Really, you have actual paper cards. Huh. All right, so, a guy I knew in the Army these many years ago taught me a game called Texas hold'em. Ever play?"

"Hold what?"

"Does anyone ever buy it when you go for innocent like that?" Clint asked with a laugh.

"As I recall, I look like an accountant. So yes, yes they do."

"I am in _so_ much trouble." 

Phil peered at a pair of dials and then looked over his shoulder. "You really are. I know this is sudden, but... any chance you're looking to join forces with a middle-aged ship's captain, a couple of crazy chicks, and an occasional Asgardii?"

"What, like for good?"

"Or bad." Phil stopped and peered ahead, then apparently the decided the engines could wait a few minutes. "Darcy on legal. Maria at the helm. Jane in the engine room. You could concentrate on being a thief, with Steve and Thor as your muscle.... What do you say?"

Clint shrugged and pulled Phil forward for the rough kiss he'd been waiting for for fifteen minutes--or maybe ten days, depending on how he looked at it. "Let's see how things are when we get back," he said. He watched Phil's eyes for a response, then kissed him again, slower. 

Phil ran his hands up inside Clint's shirt and murmured against his lips, "I thought you were the guy that leaps without looking."

"I am, but I have other people to ask," Clint said, pulling Phil up snug against him. "Darce and Stevie might have other plans."

Phil grinned. "And you?"

"I maybe want to stay. And maybe I hope they want to, too."

Phil nodded toward the engines. "Then we should make sure we get home in one piece, don't you think?"

Clint shrugged. "Probably for the best." He pursed his lips. "Then the trouble?"

"You have no idea."

\-- 

"You know, I thought it would be bigger," Stark said. They'd been back in the system less than four minutes before he'd made contact and hadn't even managed a half night's sleep before he'd come knocking on their hull. Clint looked past Phil at his bow case, still hanging in the cockpit, with longing.

Phil shook his head slightly as Darcy set down a full printed copy of the spinset with their contract on thin opaque sheets. "Size isn't specified, Stark," he said, "so unless you mean to show that this isn't the artifact in question..."

Stark shook his head. "No, what, you think I'm trying to skip out? Would I do that?"

"Yes," Bruce said from the doorway. Maria was behind him, nodding her agreement. "I'm pretty sure it's one of the things you do."

Stark frowned. "Well, not this time. Money's already been transferred. Hey, do you guys have samples from before the kids did whatever to your little guy? Because that would be useful."

"No," Clint said.

"Yes," Darcy said at the same time, holding up a sealed plasfile. "Steve's DNA. What's it worth to you?"

"In good shape?" Stark asked.

"Should be," she said. "It's from like ten minutes before they stuck their tendrils in him."

Clint blinked at her. "Do I want to know?"

"History says no, but I could tell you anyway."

"Darcy!" Steve interrupted, blushing.

"...and there's my answer," Clint said. "Hey, Stevie, you don't have to sell Stark semen samples if you don't want to. The pay on this job wasn't exactly old socks, and it's not like he's been mister open and honest with us--what the hell was all that shit with the who have we been talking to, anyway?"

"I just wanted to impose some urgency," Stark said. "Sue me."

"No thanks. Anyway, Steve doesn't need to see you anything." 

Steve had turned even redder as they talked, but waved a hand. "Naw, if it'll help for research, maybe it'll mean some other sick kid can get better."

Stark got out his tablet and opened a payment file, but Darcy shook her head and tossed him the parcel. "Damn it, Steve, going and being all noble." She pointed her finger sharply. "You better do awesome life-saving work with that, Stark."

Stark nodded and looked around. "Well, then,if business is concluded..."

"It's not." Bruce crossed his arms. "Ross?"

"Oh, him. Uh, some mutual friends might have got him treed in a little backwater that might fall into its sun in the about eighty years. The materials are there if he wants to work out how to rebuild his ship, but..." Stark grinned. "Come on. You're valuable to my research, too. Also, I'm a huge fan of a guy who figures out how to stop having feelings. Pain in the ass, if you ask me."

Bruce rolled his eyes.

"Plus, I have a lab--I have _the_ lab, seriously. It'll be great. You can work on whatever you want. Your kids can have play dates with my bots." Stark turned to go. "Oh, hey, and if you guys have time on your calendar?"

Clint and Phil glanced at each other, then shook their heads together. "We have plans for the next couple of months," Phil said. "After that, we'll get back to you. Eventually."

"Good. Pep likes both of you, and I have some ideas about that swivel drive. We should have lunch. Maybe something from south of the border." He waved as he walked away, and Bruce followed him out.

Clint waited until the hatch closed, then sighed. "He's still a jackass," he said.

"But a useful one." Steve and Darcy left the room, presumably going back to bed, Phil flipped switches one by one until everything but the primary console was dark. "Maria, you should get some sleep. I can take the helm for a while."

"We," Clint corrected. "Might as well get some practice."

She shook her head. "I caught a few hours while we came through the checkpoints," she said. "I'm good. Go make good on all those fabulous sex promises."

Phil scowled. "Maria!"

She grinned. "I said _Stark_ didn't have any watchers on the ship. I didn't make any promises about keeping my eyes and ears to myself." She looked at Clint. "What? I have to make sure Mister Trusting over here doesn't take in any murderers."

"That ever happen?"

"No," Phil said.

"Yes," She countered. "But just the once. Story for another time. Now go. You guys can take over when it's time for the boring part again."

Phil held out his elbow, and Clint grumbled, but took it.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I'd like to come back to this 'verse later on, because it feels like there's all this unrealized potential. I might in the long run sequelize here, but also my general position on remixes and transformative works is you go right for it, baby. So, should you want to make them get to the porn I didn't succeed at? Okay! :)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Treasure Hunt by Flora (florahart)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/951973) by [sk_lee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sk_lee/pseuds/sk_lee)




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